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by erinnh 1054 days ago
It happens. I’m currently working on a project where the CRM tool I need to access for data, actually does not have a unique id in its db. I have no idea if I will be able to successfully complete the project yet.
1 comments

Is there any chance that the rows actually do have a unique id, but it's not being displayed without some magic incantation?

Asking because I've seen that before in some software, where it tries to "keep things simple" by default. But that behaviour can be toggled off so it shows the full schema (and data) for those with the need. :)

Sadly, no.

The manufacturer is just really incompetent.

I was told their reason when asked was „it was easier (for us)“.

> it was easier (for us)

That's not all that unusual when something gets implemented, as people tend to take the easy approach for things that meet the desired goal.

It just sounds like the spec they were writing to wasn't very clear or it was just a checkbox list of features provided to them by marketing. So "lets get this list done then ship it". ;)

The question is whether it was actually easier.

Even a couple minutes of extra debugging takes longer than learning how to add a synthetic primary.